The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (12 page)

The little ones are not as they appear

The king’s agent sat and pondered until his valet delivered a basin of hot water and a breakfast tray. He got out of bed, took a small bottle from a drawer, and poured five drops from it into a glass of water, which he swallowed in a single gulp. Dr. Steinhaueser had instructed him to use quinine and nothing else when his attacks came on, but, secretly, Burton had also been dosing himself with Saltzmann’s Tincture, which Steinhaueser scorned on the basis that its manufacturer had never disclosed the medicine’s full ingredients. He’d warned that it almost certainly contained cocaine, which could lead to dependency.

Burton washed and shaved at the basin. A warm vitality soaked into his flesh as the tincture took effect—honey and sunlight oozing through his arteries. Nevertheless, he was still feeling weak and decided to spend the rest of this Tuesday wrapped in his
jubbah
, dedicating himself to driving out the last vestiges of malaria with strong tobacco and perhaps a brandy or two.

After finishing his toilet and winding the brass man’s key, he repaired to the study, lit a Manila, and began to leaf through the morning newspapers. A great many of their pages were devoted to the Tichborne case, and he quickly realised that he was still lacking sufficient background information about the affair. It was time, he decided, to start earning his salary.

A little later, when Mrs. Angell brought him a coffee, he asked her to take a note:

To Mr. Henry Arundell
,

My dear sir, though, to my deep regret, relations continue to be strained between us, I hope I can go some way to repairing them by doing you a service with regard to the Tichborne situation. The prime minister has commissioned me to look into the matter, and I would greatly appreciate the advice of one who has greater knowledge of the family than I. To that end, may I extend to you an invitation to dine with me at the Venetia Royal Hotel at seven o’clock this evening?

Ever yours sincerely,
Rich’d F. Burton

“Send that by runner, please. Mr. Arundell is currently residing at the family’s town house, 32 Oxford Square.”

“A nice area for those that can afford it,” the old lady opined. “If you don’t mind me asking, has there been any word from Miss Isabel?”

“The last I heard, her parents had received two letters. It seems my former fiancée is running around with the notorious Jane Digby, the bandit queen of Damascus. I believe they’ve gathered quite a force of brigands and are currently raiding caravans on the Arabian Peninsula.”

“My stars!” Mrs. Angel exclaimed. “Who’d have thought?”

“The Arundells still consider that my breaking the engagement caused her to run off to Arabia in the first place. I expect to receive a frosty response from her father.”

His housekeeper left the room, went downstairs, lifted a whistle from a hook, opened the front door, and blew three quick blasts. Moments later, a runner arrived on the doorstep. It jogged, turned in circles, and whined restlessly until she produced a tin from beneath a hall table. She took a chunk of roast beef from it and fed it to the ravenous hound. Then she placed the waxed envelope between its teeth and stated the delivery address. The dog turned and sped away.

In his study, Burton had settled at his main desk and was writing in his journal, copying out the notes he’d taken at the British Library and adding copious annotations and cross references. An hour later, he moved to a different desk and began work on a tale from
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night.
He employed a unique device for this: a mechanical contraption invented by Mrs. Angell’s late husband. It was the only one of its kind, an “autoscribe,” which Burton played rather like a piano. Each of its keys corresponded to a letter of the alphabet or an item of punctuation and printed it onto a sheet of paper when pressed. It had taken the king’s agent two weeks to master the machine but, having done so, he was now able to write at a phenomenal speed.

At four o’clock, a runner brought a reply from Henry Arundell:

Sir Richard
,

The Venetia is booked solid by a large private party. I have reserved a table for us at the Athenaeum Club instead. I will see you there at seven.

p>. 
H. Arundell

“To the point but satisfactory,” Burton muttered.

He abandoned the desk, flopped into his armchair, and contemplated the case at hand.

Burton met his former prospective father-in-law at the appointed time and place. As they shook hands, the elder man exclaimed: “You look positively skeletal!”

“A bout of malaria,” Burton explained.

“Still bothering you, eh?”

“Yes, though the attacks come less frequently. Have you heard from Isabel?”

“I don’t want to discuss my daughter, let’s have that clear from the outset.”

“Very well, sir,” Burton replied. He noticed that Arundell’s face was haggard and careworn, and felt a pang of guilt as they made their way into the club’s dining room.

The Athenaeum was crowded as usual, but in keeping with its reputation as one of the bastions of British Society, the members restricted their voices to a civilised murmur. A low buzz of conversation enveloped the two men as they passed into the opulent dining room and were escorted to their table by the maître d’. They ordered a bottle of wine, deciding to take a glass before commencing their meal.

Arundell wasted no time with niceties. “Why has Lord Palmerston taken an interest?” he asked.

“I really don’t know.”

“You haven’t enquired?”

“Have you ever met Palmerston?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how blasted tight-lipped he is, and I don’t mean the surgery!”

Burton was referring to the Eugenicist treatments the prime minister had received in an attempt to maintain his youth. His lifespan had been extended to, it was estimated, about a hundred and ten years, and his body had been stretched and smoothed until he resembled an expressionless waxwork.

“He’s evasive, that’s true,” Arundell mused. “As are all politicians. Goes with the territory. But I’d have thought he’d at least give you something to go on.”

Burton shook his head. “When he offered me my first commission, last year, it was simply a case of ‘look into this,’ then he left me to it. This is the same. Perhaps he doesn’t want to plant any preconceptions.”

“Maybe so. Very well, how can I help?”

“By telling me about the Tichborne family curse and their prodigal son.”

Henry Arundell tapped his forefinger on the table, gazed at his wine glass, and looked thoughtful for a few moments. He raised his eyes to Burton and gave a curt nod.

“Tichborne House sits on a hundred-and-sixteen-acre estate near the village of Alresford, not far from Winchester. The Bishop of Winchester granted it to Walter de Tichborne in 1135, and it was, just a few years later, inherited by his son, Roger de Tichborne, a soldier, a womaniser, and a brute. It was his treatment of his wife as she lay dying from a wasting disease that brought about the curse.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“What sayest thou, Physician Jankyn? Shall the bitch die this night?”

Squire Roger de Tichborne threw his riding crop onto a table and dropped into a chair, which creaked beneath his considerable bulk. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. He’d been riding with the hounds, but the one fox he and his colleagues had flushed out had been a mangy little thing with no fight in it. The dogs had brought it down in a matter of minutes. He and the men had vented their frustration in a tavern. He was now drunk and in a foul mood.

He yelled at his valet, though the man was less than fifteen feet away: “Hobson! Dost thou stand there a doltish idler? Get these accursed boots off me, man!”

The valet, a short and meek individual, hurried to his master’s feet, knelt, and started to tug at a boot.

“Well, Jankyn? Answer me! Am I to be free at last, or wouldst the filthy harridan dally?”

Physician Jankyn, tall, bony, and gloomy in aspect, wrung his large hands nervously, his mouth twitching.

“The Lady Mabella be sore stricken, my lord,” he announced. “Yet she may bide awhile.”

Hobson, gripping de Tichborne’s left calf, looked up and said: “My Lady doth wish to see thee anon, sire.”

De Tichborne pulled back his right leg and, with a vicious grunt, sent his heel thudding into his valet’s face. Hobson yelped and tumbled backward onto the floor, blood spurting from his nose.

“Pardieux! That’s the case, is it?” de Tichborne snarled. “Get thee upstairs, thou whimpering dog, and tell the harpy that I’ll see her at my own convenience and not at hers, the hell-spawned witch! Get out of my sight!”

The valet clambered to his feet and staggered away across the opulent parlour, knocked into the corner of a table, almost fell, and stumbled out of the room.

“So thinkest thou she’ll tarry, hey?” de Tichborne enquired of the medical man. He bent and started to yank at his boots. “For how long, pray? Hours? Days? Weeks, may God preserve me?”

“Weeks? Nay, my lord. Not a week—nary a day. I have it that she’ll live but the night through and will be taken by sunup.”

Finally liberating his right leg, de Tichborne flung the riding boot across the room. It hit a wall and dropped to the floor.

“Praise be! Fetch me a draught, wouldst thou, Master Physician? And take one for thyself.”

Jankyn nodded and moved from the fireplace to a bureau upon which decanters of wine stood. He filled two goblets and took one over to de Tichborne, placing it on an occasional table beside his host’s chair.

The squire’s second boot came free and followed the first through the air. It crashed into a vase atop a cabinet, shattered the ornament, and fell to the floor amid the fragments.

“Fortune grant me a single boon: to be free of that damnable nag by the morn!” the aristocrat muttered.

He took the wine and downed it in a single gulp, then jumped to his stockinged feet, pushed past the doctor, and crossed to the bureau to pour himself another.

“Prithee, repair to the library awhile, Physician. I shall take me up to see the whore.”

“But my lord!” Jankyn protested. “The Lady Mabella is in no fit condition to receive!”

“She’ll receive her damned husband, and if the effort should kill her, thou canst aid me in quaffing by way of celebration!”

Jankyn moistened his lips, hesitated, nodded unhappily, and, with goblet in hand, shuffled out of the parlour through the door that led to the library.

Casting a sneer at the elderly physician’s back, de Tichborne turned and also left the room. He paced to the reception hall, retrieved his shoes, buckled them on, and stamped up the broad, sweeping staircase to the gallery above. Here he stopped and emptied his goblet. He tossed it over the balustrade and wiped his mouth as the tin vessel clattered on the tiled floor below. He proceeded along a corridor to his wife’s bedchamber.

One of her nurses, sitting outside the room, stood as he approached the door. She curtseyed and moved aside.

He ran his eyes appreciatively over the girl then pushed open the portal and entered the dimly lit room without announcement.

“Art thou living, wife?”

There came movement from the large four-poster bed, and a tremulous voice, directed at the two nurses who sat beside it, said: “Leave us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused, and bobbing at the squire as they passed him, they hurried out to join their colleague in the hallway.

De Tichborne closed the door after them.

“Come thou here,” the Lady Mabella whispered.

He paced over to her and looked down in disgust at her wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and long white hair.

The eyes that looked back at him were of the blackest jet.

“I have but a short time,” she said.

“Hallelujah!” he responded.

“Drunken sot!” she exclaimed. “Hast thou no mercy in thy soul? Art thou in truth so barren of feeling? There were times—distant, aye—when thou held me close to thy bosom!”

“Ancient history, old woman.”

“’Tis so. I shall be well rid of thee, Roger, when I pass, for thou art a brute and a whoremonger!”

“Say what thou wilt. I care not. So long as thou go to judgement by morn!”

The woman struggled to push herself into a sitting position. De Tichborne watched coldly, not raising a finger to help. Finally, she managed to drag herself up a little and rested back on her pillow.

“The final judgement troubles me little, husband, for have I not given to the poor of this parish through every sad year that I abided here? It is my final wish that thou shalt do the same.”

“Ha! I’ll be damned!”

“Of that I am certain. Nevertheless, I would have the de Tichbornes donate, during the Feast of the Annunciation every year, produce of the fields to the people.”

“The blazes they will!”

“Payest thou this dole, husband, or I avow, with my very last breath I shall curse thee and thy offspring forevermore!”

Sir Roger blanched. “Have I not suffered thy evil eye sufficiently?” he muttered uneasily.

“For all thou hast inflicted upon me? Nay, there can be naught sufficient for that!” the old woman croaked. “Wilt thou concede?”

The squire looked down at his dying wife. His mouth was twisted with hatred and his eyes glinted horribly in the faint candlelight.

“I shall do as thou command me,” he growled, after a long pause. “But with one provision: it shall be thou who sets the levy!”

The old woman regarded her husband, blinking in puzzlement.

“What is this?” she exclaimed. “Thou biddest me to choose the amount of the annual donation?”

“In a manner! I bid thee traverse the borders of the fields from which the wheat must be taken. I shall dedicate to the poor of the parish the produce of whatever land thou encircles. Thou hast the time it takes for a torch to burn its full length to thus mark the extent of the charity.”

Lady Mabella gasped in horror. “What sayest thou? Surely to God thou cannot expect me to walk?”